McLaren clinched their fourth consecutive double victory at last Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, with Lando Norris fractionally beating his championship-leading team-mate Oscar Piastri. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his post-race analysis.

McLaren looked utterly dominant across the practice sessions, but a sudden change to the weather conditions meant that they were unexpectedly challenged by several rivals.

In the end, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc got the better of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, but a second and third spot on the grid were still promising starting places for the Woking-based outfit.

At the start, championship leader, Piastri held on to second place, but Norris fell behind the Mercedes of George Russell and the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso.

With a one-stop strategy for Norris and fading pace for Leclerc, the McLaren pair worked its way up into the lead. The closing stages saw Piastri close in on his team-mate on his fresher tyres, and the Australian mounted a several attacks, Norris held on to secure a one-two for the British outfit.

When analysing the race pace with the help of a boxplot diagram, Oscar Piastri emerges as the quickest driver with an average lap time of 1m21.05s. The race winner, Lando Norris was only by 0.22s slower per lap which is impressive considering that he only pitted once.

The difference in strategy is shown by the mean and median lap times. The two stop meant that Piastri's lap times produced a very similar mean and median lap times, while Norris' median is placed significantly higher than his mean lap time which is a consequence of his elongated first stint and the fact that he spent the opening stages of the race stuck behind the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso and the Mercedes of George Russell.

Third-placed driver Russell completed the 70-lap Mogyoród race with a similar strategy to Piastri, and his performance led to a very similar box plot diagram as well. In simple terms, he lacked race pace, having been three tenths of a second slower than the Australian in average.

Leclerc's fading pace

Having controlled the first half of the race, Charles Leclerc's performance endured a big hit as his pace faded due to technical issues.

As mentioned in an earlier analysis produced by F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo, Leclerc's issues started on Lap 9, with the data clearly showing that he lost valuable top speed down the main straight and also on the uphill section into the Mansell-corner (Turn 4).

It was a consequence of a more conservative engine mode which Leclerc was asked to use after Lap 8.

His race engineer Bryan Bozzi referred to this engine mode as FS1 which - according to Mercedes driver George Russell - teams only opt to use when they are eager to reduce top-end speed in order to prevent downforce peaks pushing the floor down onto the track.

Interestingly, Leclerc hardly lost anything to Piastri after changing the engine mode. When the McLaren man dived into the pits for his first tyre service, he was 2.489 seconds away from the Ferrari driver. It means that Leclerc lost 0.533 seconds over the stretch of these 10 laps despite switching into a lower engine mode.

With Piastri having pitted a lap earlier, the gap reduced to just 1.266 seconds as the Australian was able to exploit the grip advantage on his first lap.

On the following laps, the gap between them showed very little fluctuation, and it was exactly 1.645s when Leclerc came into the pit lane for his second stop. Ferrari delivered another faultless, sensational tyre change that lasted only 2.0 seconds.

Piastri pitted six laps later, and rejoined the track 5.327 seconds behind Leclerc. It was not surprising to see Piastri lose around four seconds over the stretch of these six laps as Leclerc enjoyed the additional grip of his fresh Pirelli hard tyres.

In fact, the Monegasque was able to raise his pace by a second per lap compared to his last laps on his previous set of hards – 1m21.629s on Lap 39 versus 1.20.688s on Lap 42. However, his rivals – Piastri and Mercedes driver George Russell – found 1.5 seconds on their fresh C3 tyres, whereas it was only a second in case of Leclerc, who then started to lose even more pace from Lap 50.

Lewis Hamilton's struggles at the Hungaroring are well-documented. The British driver failed to make it out in Q2, with his result leaving him in P12 on the grid for the Hungarian Grand Prix where overtaking is usually at a premium even if the situation slightly improved since the introduction of the ground-effect cars.

His disappointing result meant the seven-time F1 champion spent the majority of the race stuck in traffic, and was unable to improve his starting position when he crossed the finish line.

The boxplot generated from Hamilton's lap times clearly highlights the British driver's issues at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The range of Hamilton’s boxplot is not a surprise given the difference between his potential performance and his pace behind much slower cars. It meant that the range of his boxplot is the widest. The Briton was losing well over a second per lap stuck behind the Haas of Oliver Bearman and the Racing Bulls of Isack Hadjar.

The Haas driver pitted on Lap 30 and the French racer on Lap 33 which - finally - allowed Hamilton to unleash the speed he had available. The Stevenage-born driver went 1.5 seconds quicker on his first tour in free air compared to his laps when he was stuck in traffic.

It is also worth taking a look at the relation between Hamilton’s mean and median lap time. The latter is placed well above the former, offering a further confirmation how much Hamilton was hindered by slower cars which robbed him the opportunity of unleashing his true pace.